Ghosts Of The Past: Prologue
by ronnambi
Summary: When a mission goes south and a 6 man 21st century special forces team land in the Mass Effect universe, what's going to happen? Especially when the team leader practically knows what's going to come.
1. Chapter 1

**Ghosts Of The Past :Prologue**

**What happens when a 21st century special forces soldier and his team, on an operation to stop the delivery of a nuclear device by terrorists are blasted into the Mass Effect universe when the bomb detonates? Multiverse story with major charaters from other universes joining in the fight. Pre-Mass Effect. Using for character development **


	2. Chapter 2 : Ignition

**Disclamer : Except for the OCs I own nothing in the coming pages.**

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><p>2nd November 2017<p>

1006 hrs

The objective of this op was to secure a nuclear device from a LeT cell which had successfully raided a Pakistani nuclear weapons storage facility, but had taken horrendous losses. It was now being transported in a convoy through Pak-occupied Kashmir to be used to pressure my country to hand over Jammu and Kashmir to the LeT. My team, Delta, had been tasked with recovering the device. My name is Captain Nikhil Kumar serving in 9 PARA (SF), Indian Army.

"_Saab_ (Sir), enemy convoy approaching our position" my Havildar (Sergeant) Jeevan Kumar reported over the radio.

"Copy Jeevan. Alright Deltas, wait until targets enter kill-zone, engage on my command" I reply. My CO comes on the radio. He says, "Delta-six, Tiger here"

"Go Tiger" I reply.

"Delta-six, be advised convoy consists of 2 technicals, 4 troops trucks and a cargo truck. Package presumably in the cargo truck. Engage at your discretion"

"Copy that",I reply then switch to my team comm. "Deltas, be advised, enemy convoy consists of 2 technicals, 4 troops trucks and a cargo truck. Samar, Jamshed, engage the technicals, use the Shipon, then switch to the LMG. Karan stop the cargo truck and engage any hostile approaching it. Jeevan, Hari and I will engage the troop trucks. No survivors"

As the affirmatives come in, the convoy rolls into sight.

"Delta-six to all Deltas, engage" I order.

Two shots ring out and the truck with the package is stopped with an anti-material round through the engine block and one through its driver's head

And all hell breaks loose.

As the convoy lurches to a standstill, the two technicals vanish in two separate firestorms as Samar engaged them, then he quickly switched to the LMG, while Jamshed suppressed any of the survivors with his Dragunov. Karan methodically took out any militant approaching the target truck and the rest of us start shooting the trucks with our Dragunovs. One round struck a target through the canvas and he exploded, taking at least five more in the blast.

"Deltas be advised, targets have suicide vests" I inform them as I shoot one more through the chest in the hope he too would blow up. Sadly he didn't. Silly fellow could have made my job easier.

Within the next two minutes, and a few more exploding vests later, the echoes of our shots faded away.

"Tiger, Delta-six, targets eliminated, moving to secure the package." I inform my CO over the radio

"Copy that, exfil en-route,5 minutes" he replied.

"Copy that, let's move Deltas" I order. We secure our primary weapons and switch to our secondary, suppressed Tavors. We wend our way carefully into the ambush zone and re-engage each militant with a double-tap to the head. Once we were done, we approached the package.

"Samar check the door for booby traps" I order my explosives expert. He nods and sets about checking the door.

"Clear sir" he informs me after his check is complete.

"Tiger, Delta-six, I am opening the target truck" I inform my CO.

"Go ahead"

I take a deep breath and heft open the cargo truck's doors. Inside it is a small box wired to camera and a satellite phone. The phone started to chirp as a panel on the box started glowing. The countdown showed only ten seconds.

I feel horror and dread fill me at the elaborate trap I waltzed into.

"IT'S A TRAP! GET OUT!" I yell as I throw the door shut. My teammates immediately set off the way we had come. We weren't fast enough.

The last thing I remember is a light as bright as the sun illuminating the ground ahead of me, a searing heat on my back and a thunderclap of sound which instantaneously deafened me and threw my team and me off my feet. Then an enveloping blackness enshrouded me.

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><p>After I don't know how long, I woke up to birdsong. I smelt grass and felt sunlight on my face.<p>

_Birdsong? Nothing can survive after a nuclear blast. Guess I am in heaven, _I thought to myself.

"Easy there, you're burnt pretty badly" a strong, husky and feminine voice told me. _In English_. I was surprised both by the language, as my team and I had been using Hindi for comms, as well as the distinctly American accent and the air of command the voice held.

"Jane, have a look at their equipment. _They use actual bullets!_ Nobody makes any of these things anymore. And look at their combat armour and radios!" a similarly accented male voice sounded from nearby. I blearily open my eyes and confronted by a pair of dark green eyes framed by a tanned face and dark red hair. The face is furrowed with concern, which turns to another person. I follow the direction of the gaze and see a man clad in a black full body armour, messing around with a Tavor. I see a group of similarly clad soldiers either examining our scattered equipment or bent over some prone form which would presumably be my teammates.

"John stop being a kid and come over here and help me!" the woman exclaims.

"Meh sis, you're no fun" the man replied as he put the gun down and trotted over to me.

_Brother and sister huh? I hope these Americans know what they are doing_ I couldn't help thinking sardonically, but I flinched with pain as the woman touched my face.

"Easy there, I need to put the medigel on your face" she tells me in that calm, comforting voice as I feel a cool gel being smeared on my face and the tingling feeling I had on it being applied. The man assisted until he caught sight of my dog tags. Gently, he eased it out from under my neck and started to read it.

"Nikhil Kumar, IC-112493 A, Captain, 9 PARA SF, Indian Army. Never heard of them." he reads out, flipping the tags over " oh this is so wrong! Check out his date of birth!" he thrusts my dog tags under his sister's nose. She gives him an impatient glance then looks at it. Her face pales and her eyes widen. She looks at me with shock.

"2nd October _1992!"_ she says in a stunned voice. She quickly recovers her composure and looks at me with concern.

"OK Nikhil.. can I call you Nick?" she asks. I nod and she continues, "OK Nick, my name is Jane Shepard. I am a Lieutenant in the Systems Alliance Marines. I am going to administer an anesthesia. It will just knock you out for a while. You OK with that?" I nod in reply as I feel my lips had been baked shut.

The woman, Jane, takes something from behind her back and places a box-like object next to my jugular. The next thing I feel is a needle piercing my skin and I start feeling woozy. I soon loose consciousness.

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><p><strong>And let the games begin!<strong>


	3. Chapter 3 : Invasion

**This disclaimer is the same as the previous one.**

_Unknown location, unknown time_

I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. One moment I am surrounded by what appear to be doctors, the next I am in a room of white lights.

Finally I wake up in a comfortable bed, with sunlight streaming in and the sound of birdsong. I feel refreshed and start to examine my surroundings. I seem to be in ground floor hospital ward with twelve beds. Five others were occupied. As I got into a sitting position, I examined the other occupants and was relieved to see the rest of Delta team with me. All of them were unmarked and dressed in a gray t-shirt and black cargo pants. Samar, Hari and Jamshed were awake, talking among themselves,while Karan and Jeevan were still fast asleep. I examine the symbol on my shirt a black arrow with a globe under it. Seeing it and remembering the names and subjects of what occurred after the device blew up in our face led me to an uneasy theory, which would be very hard to explain to my troops.

_Oh man, they are not going to like this at all_ I thought to myself.

As I was wondering how to explain to them, Samar turns to me and says ," _Saab, mujhe sab kuch achetarhe say yaad nahin hain, par hum Amrecki ke haathon mein hain kya?"_ (Sir, I don't remember everything clearly, but are we now in the hands of the Americans?)

_"Aise kyun bol rahe_ _ho?_" (Why do you say that?) I ask. By now everyone is awake.

_"Saab, jab woh bomb phata, toh agle kuch shan mein hi hum idhar aagaye. Aur jinho nai hume bacchaya, woh Amrecki thai"_ (Sir, when that bomb blew up, in the next few seconds we came here. And those who saved us were Americans) Karan replied from his corner of the bed.

I think carefully, wondering if my men will think I am nuts or if I am suffering from a concussion when I explain my theory. But, even before I begin a massive explosion occurs. The six of us hit the floor whole place starts blaring with sirens, explosions and screams. And underlying this is the sound of automatic weapons fire.

We share a look then hustle out of the room, with me at point.

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><p>Chaos. That is what greeted us when we exited our room. People were running helter-skelter, doctors and nurses away from the explosions and what appeared to be soldiers towards them.<p>

But what caught our attention were the space ships floating all over the sky, engaged in death duels.

"_Saab, ab hum kahaan phase gaaye ?" _(Sir, where did we get stuck now ?) Hari asked me as we see a group of the same armoured soldiers rush past us.

"Mass Effect" I tell them. My men first look at me with confusion and then with dread as they understand what I just said. The reason is simple as I am a sci-fi nerd and once to keep my men amused, I regaled them the entire Mass Effect storyline.

Now we had the disturbing conundrum of knowing everything that could possibly happen in this reality while telling anyone would result in all of us being tossed into a mental institute and not knowing how to get back to our own reality.

Our musings were abruptly cut off by a yell

"Hey, you're those new guys right? Follow me!" a guy in black armour waves at us to follow him. We trade a look and a shrug and jog off with him to what turns out to be an armoury, with a few sets of armour and a collection of pistols.

"Here, put these on" the armoured man tells us, handing us similar armour as his own. We grab and start putting it on. We also grab three pistols apiece and put them on magnetic holsters. By unspoken consent, we shelve the questions except for one.

Jeevan asked, " What's your name? And where are we?"

"Lieutenant Kai Leng and you are on Elysium" he replied.

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><p><strong>Our heroes are in the middle of the Skyllian Blitz and meet one of the most infamous ex-Alliance members while he is still in the Alliance!<br>****What's next? **


	4. Chapter 4: Author's Note

**All right, all my readers (though few and far in between) I have an announcement to make... no I am not going to stop contributing. I am taking a brief stop as I am currently busy with interviews(wish me luck!). Also I think an outline of what is going to come will be useful.**

**First up the story is going to be mind-bogglingly AU as I will explain later in the first story's coming chapters. This is to keep the story as real as possible as virtual reality never does justice to reality, as everything is coded in 1s and 0s, and there are very few heroes and villains in real life, mostly just peoples with opposite points of view. Next the story is technically a Mass Effect-Halo crossover, with some important characters from the Inheritance Cycle series and Crysis. Lastly, the stories chronology will be as follows:**

**i) Ghosts of The Past : Prologue **

**ii) Ghosts of The Past : Task force Delta**

**iii) Ghosts of The Past : Shattered Memories (this will be updated parallel to GoP : TD for reasons I will explain later)**

**iv) Ghosts of The Past : ****Ghost Stories**

**v) ****Ghosts of The Past : Heaven's Wrath**

**Also I will have a collection of one-shots tackling the various relationships that will occur among the more central characters (both romantic and otherwise). The reason for this is because I don't want my main stories getting side-tracked while the bonding is going on. Also, people like an emotional subtext to every story so I decided to tackle it my way. Anyone who has just begun from the middle of any of the stories will get a good idea of what's going on as I will put references as to which chapter in which story they have to go to. All stories will be dealt from the first person point of view of all the major characters barring a few. **

**I hope this has been a little bit informative and useful.**

**Regards,**

**ronnambi.**


	5. Chapter 5 : Defence

**Disclaimer**** : Except for the OCs I own nothing in the coming pages.**

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><p><em><strong>Kai Leng's POV<strong>_**:**

The men followed me with their pistols drawn and as they got onto the main road, the group made contact with a Batarian squad.

"Open fire!" the leader of the group of unknown soldiers yelled and we all open up. The team with pistols and I with my assault rifle. One of the Batarians turned out to be a shock trooper and launched what seemed to me to be a Warp. One of the men, the dark one with a pockmarked face instinctively raised his hand, dark energy gathering around him and shot it out in a concentrated beam. It struck the Warp, shattering it and blasting aside the entire Batarian squad.

"Hari!" the leader yelled and grabbed the man, steadying him. Speaking of the leader and his men, they looked to be in their late teens to early twenties, with the leader looking like he was eighteen.

_How did someone so young get command of a special ops unit?_ I thought. My thoughts were interrupted by another group of Batarians. Before they could open fire, a singularity pulled them off their feet. I turned to the group and saw the leader wreathed in biotics, the rest of his team forming barriers around themselves as the batarians tried to shoot at them. Now I noticed, they all seemed to have blue eyes that glowed when they used their biotics.

"Open fire" their leader ordered calmly. A fusillade later, all the batarians dropped down dead when the singularity ended. The leader turned his cool, dark blue eyes at me. Those eyes seemed to pierce my soul.

"Leng get on your comms, see who's coordinating defences, and then get me on the line so we can start converging on hot spots from the enemy's rear" he ordered.

"Yes sir" I replied automatically. I hurriedly activate my omnitool, but a blast of white noise deafened me. It seemed to have deafened everyone.

"A bit of warning next time, eh friend" one of the men with electric blue eyes commented.

"Alright gentlemen, we need to locate and neutralise the source of the jamming. We need to get to elevated positions to triangulate it. Leng can you make out what frequencies are jammed?" the team leader asked me.

"Sir as far as I can make out, only short-range LOS squad comms are working, guess it's a broad spectrum jammer" I replied. He nodded his head.

"Alright then. Leng you know the lay of the land, tell me any two features which are not blocked by any obstructions"

"That would be Mount Kaiser and the Elysium Trade-floor. Here, I'll mark it on your omni's map" I reply and mark the two features.

"Alright, we locate the source of jamming from there, then move in and eliminate it. After that we locate and eliminate their command structure. Assist forces wherever you can, but don't get bogged down, we need to take out their command and control" the team leader ordered, while the team equipped themselves with weapons from the dead Batarians, "Leng, take Hari and Jeevan with you, head to Mount Kaiser, I'll take the rest and head to the Trade-floor. You have your objectives gentlemen, move out"

With that the team leader started jogging off. I quickly shout to him, "Sir, what's your name?"

He looked at me quizzically then replied "Call me Delta-six" With that, he took off with the other three behind him. I motion to the two with me to follow me.

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><p><em><strong>Jane Shepard's POV:<strong>_

My name is Lieutenant Jane Shepard, N5 System's Alliance Marine and I was having a thoroughly lousy day. My day started with a call from a friend of mine who found out that my long-term boyfriend had been cheating on her with an asari. I mean an _asari?_ Seriously? _If he had to cheat on me_, why not with a _turian_?

Next I found myself in the middle of a full-scale invasion by an unknown hostile force.

"Well it could have been worse" the soldier next to me dryly commented, as the two of us took cover behind a pile of rubble and kept popping up to lay down fire on an advancing column. I couldn't help rolling my eyes at my fellow N5 and best friend's comment.

"How could it have been worse Miri?" I had to ask.

"Well, those chaps could have deployed orbital bombardments to take us out, if it weren't for the _Agnicourt_ " replied Specialist Miranda Lawson as she hit a hostile with a Warp, turning him into a pulpy mess.

"That's just like you Miri, looking on the bright side" as I took out another hostile with a precise head shot with my assault rifle.

We kept up the fusillade on the column, but the column stops and laid down suppressive fire on us forcing us to keep our head down. Suddenly the fire stops.

"Hello ladies" a deep flanging voice comes from behind us. We both turn to see a squad led by a turian had sneaked up behind us. All of them had their weapons drawn on us.

"You might like to put your guns down now" he added.

"Like hell we will!" I respond, practically signing our death warrants. Just as the enemy squad was going to open fire, two blue blurs slammed into the entire squad, which sent them flying. The blurs coalesced themselves into two black armoured figures, whose hands were wrapped in a biotic glow.

"Take'em down!" one of them yelled as the two of them slammed their fists into the ground, creating a Nova, sending the enemy squad flying like rag dolls. A sustained firing was occurring behind us. When we looked back , the entire column had been obliterated and the area was swarming with Marines and some civilians who were armed and armoured.

"Are you ladies alright " I looked up at the black armoured man and his team mate, both of them had a hand stretched out to help Miri and me up. Not refusing a helping hand, both of us accepted it. As I was about to ask a question, a radio transmission came in.

"Delta-Six, perimeter secured" came a voice on the radio.

"Good work Jamshed, stay alert for hostiles" 'Delta-six' replied. He then turned to us.

"Do either of you ladies know how to locate a broad-spectrum jammer?" he asked us.

"I do" Miri immediately replied. He nodded to her. I couldn't see anything of his helmeted head except for his deep blue eyes, which flashed with recognition and...confusion?

"Then would you help us locate Miss..?"

"Specialist Miranda Lawson" she immediately corrected.

"My apology's ma'am. And could you help co-ordinate with the rest of the ground forces Jane?" he asked. That pulled me up short. _How_ did he know _my_ name?

"How do you know my name?" I asked him as he, Miranda and the man next to him set off in the direction of the Elysium Trade-floor. He stopped and looked at me.

"Well it would be rude of me to not thank the person who saved my team and me when we landed up here, so" he gestured to the dead enemy squad behind us, "consider that my thanks"

I put two and two together quickly "_Nick?_"

I could swear he was smiling behind that helmet as he said, "Nice to see I haven't been forgotten. Good hunting Jane" With that the three took off towards the Elysium Trade-floor.

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><p><strong>Sorry about the long wait and the AN. This is the last chapter for the coming month. I am going to be busy as hell. Also keep a weather eye out for my other story "Intergalactic Effect" which will be more canon, with slight variations, as the protagonists will have to go to other galaxies far, far away before they can get back to the Mass Effect galaxy.<strong>


End file.
